#environement

[spoodleydoodley]

Nedry No More This is my entry in a Jurassic Park art contest for the 30th anniversary of the film~

The contest has now concluded I hope you all like the design regardless, it will be available for purchase on the Threadless shop (will link when available)

[nevi-nevidilu]

Various

Stuff

[hummussexual]

By Sam Cabral

BBC News, Washington

US President Joe Biden has approved a major oil and gas drilling project in Alaska that faced strong opposition from environmental activists.

The company behind the Willow project, ConocoPhillips, says it will create local investment and thousands of jobs.

But the $8bn (£6.6bn) proposal faced a torrent of online activism in recent weeks, particularly among youth activists on TikTok.

Opponents argued it should be halted over its climate and wildlife impacts.

Located on Alaska's remote North Slope, it is the largest oil development in the region for decades and could produce up to 180,000 barrels of oil a day.

According to US Bureau of Land Management estimates, that means it will generate up to 278 million metric tonnes of CO2e over its 30-year lifetime - the equivalent of adding two million cars to US roads every year.

CO2e is a unit used to express the climate impact of all greenhouse gases together, as if they were all emitted as carbon dioxide.

Monday's approval comes one day after the Biden administration imposed limits on oil and gas drilling in 16 million acres of Alaska and the Arctic Ocean, a compromise of sorts with anti-Willow activists.

Environmentalists had argued Willow is inconsistent with President Biden's pledges to lead on climate action.

More than one million letters of protest were written to the White House, and a Change.org petition calling for Willow to be halted drew more than three million signatures.

"It's the wrong move and will be a disaster for wildlife, lands, communities, and our climate," environmental charity Sierra Club said on Monday.

Sonny Ahk, a young Iñuipat activist from Alaska who campaigned against Willow, said the development would "lock in Arctic oil and gas extraction for another 30 years and catalyse future oil expansion in the Arctic".

"While out-of-state executives take in record profits, local residents are left to contend with the detrimental impacts of being surrounded by massive drilling operations," he said.

But all three lawmakers who represent Alaska in Congress, including one Democrat, pushed for the project's approval, touting it as a much-needed investment in the region's communities.

They also argued it would help boost domestic energy production and lessen the country's reliance on foreign oil.

"This was the right decision for Alaska and our nation," added ConocoPhillips CEO Ryan Lance on Monday.

The US energy giant, which is already Alaska's largest crude oil producer, will enhance energy security, create good union jobs and provide benefits to Alaska Native communities, he said.

[lesbinewren]

we need to make using chatgpt embarrassing bc sorry it really is. what do you mean you can’t write an email

[kiwi]

anybody else feel that being human is like being a long-time syndicated cartoon character watching the world get more complex while your own design stays the same until youre incongruous with the reality around you??

[procrastinatingfeminist]

And, not to shit on the developing nations or the US, because it IS very important that the US fucking finally catches on with the rest of the world and with the orange baboon in office it seems unlikely that it will happen in the next four years, but it is of immense importance that the costs for renewable technology sunk deep enough that the developing nations can afford to install those on a broad scale. Because there are a whole lot more of these countries then there of white rich countries and if the costs have stayed artificially inflated, we would have been fucking doomed.

There are a whole lot of fascinating and ingenious innovations coming from people in those places, but if they can't get off the ground because of the costs for putting new tech into production or have to be sold to first world countries to get over the financing threshold and thus get reserved only for the privileged few, then they are of no use, and meanwhile we already have things that can help but are kept back from wide use just because of profits - this is a catch 22. But there are a lot of initiatives that work on affordability and dissemination and bridging the gap between innovators and the financial sector, and that is giving me hope that we as a species will be able to survive.

We have already averted truly apocalyptic levels of global warming.

Yes, read that again. Let it sink in. This is what the science now says. We have already averted truly apocalyptic global warming.

To quote David Wallace-Wells, author of The Uninhabitable Earth, from his huge feature in the New York Times:

"Thanks to astonishing declines in the price of renewables, a truly global political mobilization, a clearer picture of the energy future and serious policy focus from world leaders, we have cut expected warming almost in half in just five years... The window of possible climate futures is narrowing, and as a result, we are getting a clearer sense of what’s to come: a new world, full of disruption but also billions of people, well past climate normal and yet mercifully short of true climate apocalypse." (New York Times, October 22, 2022. Unpaywalled here. Emphasis mine. And yes, this vision of the future is backed up by the current science on the issue, as he explains at length in the article.)

So we've already averted truly apocalyptic warming, and we've already cut expected warming IN HALF in just the past five years.

The pace of technology, of innovation, of prices, of feasibility, of discovery, of organizing, of grassroots movements, of movements in other countries around the world, have all picked up the pace so fast in the last five years.

Renewable technology and capacity are both increasing at an exponential rate. It's all S-curves, ones that look like this:

-via The Economist, June 20, 2024.

How much more will we manage in another five years? Another ten? Another twenty?

I know the US is about to fucking suck about the environment for the next four years. But the momentum of renewable energy is far too much to stop - both in the US (x) and around the world.

(Huge shoutouts to India, China, and Brazil for massive gains for the environment in renewables, and Brazil for massive progress against Amazon deforestation.)

We're going to get there.

Say it with me. We're going to get there.

[catchymemes]

[nando161mando]

[cindca]

"The Forest"

An illustration I painted and turned into an animated gif. This was very tedious but I like how it turned out.

[typhlonectes]

[nevi-nevidilu]

Putting that Big ass watermark it took me too long not to

[lylahammar]

My take on unicorns! I'd really love to make a mythical creature field guide someday, since the Spiderwick Field Guide is what inspired me to start drawing in the first place 🥰